Historic Latinx Turnout

A vicious cycle that we never believed in and that we set out to prove wrong.

Going in to the 2018 midterms the stakes were high. Latinx communities faced unprecedented policies of harassment, discrimination, and family separation. Latino voters had the opportunity to make their voices heard in historic numbers — but needed to be registered and organized in order to do it.

Voto Latino was up to the challenge. We had the expertise — after all, we’ve been registering new voters via text message since the flip phone days. And we had the cultural fluency — as Latinos we believe in the power of Latinos to be powerful changemakers. It turns out, when you ask Latinos to register, they do! When we showed up for our community, they showed up in droves. Voto Latino registered 202,399 new voters. That means we registered 15 percent of all new voters in Texas! We were one of the top 10 voter registration programs in 36 states. Our trusted brand, innovative VoterPal app, peer-to-peer strategy, and targeted digital advertising meant we maximized our resources to register more voters than at any time in Voto Latino history.

But we didn’t stop there. We knew that if we asked those new voters to make their voice heard, they would. Seventy-seven percent of the voters we registered turned out to vote. They were part of a wave of Latinx voter power that showed up in historic numbers for the midterm. In 2018, 11.7 million Latinos turned out to vote, up from the 6.8 million who turned out for the 2014 midterms. Nearly a quarter of those voters had never voted in a midterm before. By asking our community to stand up and be counted, we ensured that they did.

Now, we turn to the future. Latino voters will be the second biggest voting bloc in 2020, with 32 million eligible to vote. Fifteen million remain unregistered — a staggering gap and an unprecedented opportunity. We can write our own self-fulfilling prophecy: when we register, we vote. When we vote, we win.

Voto Latino is poised to register 1 million new voters by 2020 – and we hope you’ll support us as we do.